Amazingly enough guys, it looks like we've got a better than even chance of avoiding two liberal nightmares this year. At the beginning of 2009 I would've never thought that we'd get out of this year without a liberal fanstasy health care reform bill passed and I was sure that something major was gonna come out of Copenhagen. How in the world did this president and this Congress screw this up? There's not been a stronger mandate to act in American politics in my lifetime.

Paul Girouard

12-17-2009, 09:08 AM

The year isn't over yet:rolleyes:

elf

12-17-2009, 09:59 AM

The uneducable party of no.

JimD

12-17-2009, 10:20 AM

Amazingly enough guys, it looks like we've got a better than even chance of avoiding two liberal nightmares this year. At the beginning of 2009 I would've never thought that we'd get out of this year without a liberal fanstasy health care reform bill passed and I was sure that something major was gonna come out of Copenhagen. How in the world did this president and this Congress screw this up? There's not been a stronger mandate to act in American politics in my lifetime.

Can't say much about health care except that the opposition to reform seems to be coming from politiians, not their constituents. As for Copenhagen, you will only marshall your nation to action when there is a clearly undeniable calamity, such as 9/11, or Pearl Harbour. Climate change is still deniable. Unfortunately, if the predictions are correct by the time it is undeniable it may also be too late to stop.

Some one has to be plain unaware to fantacize that there's anything monolithic about the Democratic Party. Even years ago, when LBJ fameously remarked at the start of a state convention, "Nice to see this many unarmed Democrats in one room together."

The Republicans have largely purged all but one rather narrow brand of conservatives. The Democrats have a few liberals, a lot of right of center moderates, and a few more real conservatives. There is nothing about this Congress that guarentees passage of anything so long as the threat of fillabuster can be made. The minority knows that on anything they care about, they can force it to supermajority in the Senate no matter what the House passes. And they know that getting 60 of 60 Democrats to agree on anything, including what day of the week it is, is not in the cards.

But let the party of "No" keep pretending to be for something other than unrestrained corporate greed.

TomF

12-17-2009, 12:45 PM

You have a point, Erster. I also think that the Dems wasted too much time trying to cajole the Reps into bipartisanship on health care.

Unlike you, I think they ought to have given it 6 months (tops), then flexed their majorities and rolled in a single-payer plan. Damn the torpedoes. Then let the Reps try to take away universal health care from millions of Americans the next time they got into office.

Should have been a lot bolder.

Ian McColgin

12-17-2009, 01:09 PM

Back in July Rep. Roy Blunt announced that his previous promise to produce a GOP health care measure was void. He felt more power could be garnered by only opposing, not proposing.

Blunt honestly explained back then that had the “House GOP Health Care Solutions Group” offered a proposal, they would have been obliged to discuss and compromise. He also explained that there are no circumstances now or ever that the GOP notions would be adopted in whole then or ever and he did not want to have partial adoption as part of a bipartisan solution. He’s clear that so long as he can keep the Republican side unified, there will be no reform from anyone. But we might get a chance to see whatever it is they claim to be ready to propose if next session it might serve a propaganda purpose.

Anyway, this stall is entirely the deliberate tactic of the minority party. As, by the way, is their right under our system whether it’s for reasons of conscious, as they claim, or reasons more venial, as their actions indicate.

I have little good to say about the Democratic leaders, Obama included, who have allowed such a level of pointless compromise - - -

Unless they have taken this as a deliberate strategy to prove to all that the Republicans in Congress are purely against everything and to thus drive the wavering Democrats into action.

Hope springs eternal, even in the face of all this apparent stupidity.

TomF

12-17-2009, 01:17 PM

You're far too modest, Erster. The Reps are represented in this bill ... in the options which were explicitly ruled out in the vain attempt to lure a few into bipartisanship.

Obama's commitment to bringing both parties together on a Health Care reform led him first to abandon a single-payer option, and then a meaningful public option available to ALL Americans. That commitment led him to believe the Reps were negotiating in good faith.

And the sight of such negotiation emboldened the Blue Dog Democrats ... who believe Obama needs them more than they need him.

It is Obama's failure - and frankly, I find myself hoping that this bill utterly explodes over the next few weeks ... exposing the mockery of good-faith negotiations that have occurred. And that in response Obama grows balls of iron, fiercely imposes party discipline on his own lot, and the Dem majorities pass a new bill which does the right thing.

It's Obama's failing ... but the Reps' fingerprints are all over the current bill, for all that none will ever vote for it.

BrianW

12-17-2009, 01:23 PM

I didn't know there were any Republicans here. ;)

But hey, I was looking forward to free health care. Unfortunately, I figured they'd screw it up as soon as I saw Obama walk away, and leave it to Pelosi and Reid.

He never had a plan, not even when he was a Senator. Talk about Kool-Aid.

TomF

12-17-2009, 01:31 PM

I didn't know there were any Republicans here. ;)...Oh, that's right. Folks like yourself and Donn, to say nothing of Pefjr, Big Woody etc., aren't Reps at all; you're non-partisan.

But hey, I was looking forward to free health care. Unfortunately, I figured they'd screw it up as soon as I saw Obama walk away, and leave it to Pelosi and Reid.

He never had a plan, not even when he was a Senator. Talk about Kool-Aid.That's my point exactly! Its pathetic!

Ian McColgin

12-17-2009, 01:40 PM

Normally ask for double to triple?? That's plain stupid and no real negotiator does that. Sure you often open with everything you can reasonably expect but if you do more than that, you are quickly known as an idiot who does no good faith deal and in the long run loose political and/or commercial clout. At least in the community that pays attention. There are always passing suckers.

Especially community organizers, who are always negotiation from a position of social, political and economic disadvantage, learn to ask for what they mean.

In a give context there can be apparant exceptions. Especially in the strategy of bringing pain not to whoever brought you pain but rather whoever has some power to ease a pain. Thus, in tenant union organizing we'd often start by really pushing a board of health rather than a mish mash of slum lords. In the major reform of utilities in Massachussetts in the 80's we did not organize on ComElectric or any other single utility. We organized on the DPU. But even there, only apparant exceptions - we negotiated for the reasonable and attainable - which we got.

All successful negotiators I have seen in business and politics do likewise. Those that don't are scorned.

Paul Pless

12-17-2009, 01:43 PM

Especially community organizers, who are always negotiation from a position of social, political and economic disadvantage, learn to ask for what they mean.Here come the apologists.:rolleyes:

In case its escaped your notice, Obama hasn't been a 'community organizer' for some 12 plus years now.

TomF

12-17-2009, 01:45 PM

Sorry but in ...(snip!).I hear your perspective, Erster. It's the viewpoint emerging from the Reps in Congress too.

Facts are facts:

It's true that the bill was written solely by, and will only get "yes" votes from ... Dems.
Obama's team blew it through thinking the Reps were negotiating in good faith. They bargained away the most meaningful elements of reform, and ultimately got nothing in return.
At this point, the Health Reform cause would prolly be better served by having this bill blow up, replaced by a bill that only ever hoped to have Dem-only support ... but extended universal health insurance coverage.
Like every other nation, the US would then have restricted its foreign policy adventurism, by needing to balance its financial demands against the legitimate needs of the full domestic population.

Ian McColgin

12-17-2009, 01:57 PM

In case Mr Pless thinks his remarks are in even the slightest a response tomy critique of the "ask for double" idiocy, yeah, I noticed that Obama had a career teaching and in politics from state to federal office in the years since he was any sort of community organizer.

He appears to have brought with him many of the lessons from those days. Two important lessons are stay in the lead of but not necessarily on point or too far ahead of your constituency; and negotiate for the reasonable, not the utterly unobtainable.

Another lesson, better learned by sailors like Sen Kennedy but absorbable even by the landlocked, is akin to noticing that you can't aim straight at the weather mark. You must be able to tack upwind and be able to trim your sails with the shifts, all the while still getting to that weather mark.

Time will tell whether Obama can master the actual situation to manipulate and shape the various opposing political and economic forces to a good next stage or not. As I know from loosing more than one race, having a clear idea of where the weather mark is does not mean I'll read the shifts right and be first there.